Restored vol - document icons trashed

[khos]

I just restored a complete volume after replacing the hard disk. Now all the document icons are generic. Double clicking the icon doesn't open the correct application. "Get info" shows "object.nib" as the default application. Wierd? The application icon appear to be ok.

[dnanian]

That's a bit strange; it sounds like your Launch Services database needs to be rebuilt. It's easy to do, but requires the Terminal: you can cut and paste the following line to accomplish the fix (reboot after):

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Scary as it seems, that should take care of it!

[supuhee]

That's a bit strange; it sounds like your Launch Services database needs to be rebuilt. It's easy to do, but requires the Terminal: you can cut and paste the following line to accomplish the fix (reboot after):

/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Scary as it seems, that should take care of it!
I have a similar problem. I cloned my Panther partition (X) from MacHD to a Firewire drive in order to re-partition MacHD, then cloned X back to MacHD and made a new safety clone on a second internal disc. Most document icons have become generic when I boot from the safety clone but are normal when I boot from X.

[dnanian]

I'd try the same solution on your Safety clone, and see if that helps, supuhee.

[supuhee]

No luck. Earlier today I tried sandbox but got no response, now I tried MacHD. I get the following messages:
__________________________________
2005-07-29 20:50:30.519 lsregister[769] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CocoaBooklet.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan%
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan% /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
2005-07-29 20:53:57.321 lsregister[773] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CLIX/CLIX.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan% /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
2005-07-29 20:55:27.978 lsregister[778] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CLIX/CLIX.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan%
___________________________________________
I trashed Cocoa Booklet and its plist file, but then Terminal complained about CLIX. and after I expunged CLIX and its plist, it complained about Chop. Evidently Terminal wants to clear out my entire Applications folder step by step, which is no solution.

[dnanian]

I'm not sure what to suggest, supuhee: Terminal is not suggesting clearing your Applications folder, but rather Launch Services is indicating that these particular applications have poorly formed Info.plist files. That seems to be preventing scanning: perhaps the applications have been updated?

[supuhee]

I'm not sure what to suggest, supuhee: Terminal is not suggesting clearing your Applications folder, but rather Launch Services is indicating that these particular applications have poorly formed Info.plist files. That seems to be preventing scanning: perhaps the applications have been updated?
No, Terminal is on a vendetta. Note that it is flagging apps in inverse alphabetical order: Cocoa Booklet -- Clix -- Chop -- and this morning, "Check Preference Files". Age is not the issue: although Chop is ancient (2003), the others are current or only one version before the latest.

A fix that seems to have worked this morning is to make a brand-new clone. The previous Sandbox, made from MacHD after reinitializing the drive and cloning MacHD back from a Firewire drive, had some birthing problems because I had mistakenly chosen the "Backup - all files" option. That gave me an error message when the 9 GB partition was full, and when I changed it to Safety Clone, I foolishly chose smart update rather than starting from scratch. Presumably I got a hybrid that did not have all the required features of a safety clone.

[dnanian]

That should have worked fine, supuhee: Smart Update can certainly change a backup into a safety clone... but, I won't argue with success!

[supuhee]

That should have worked fine, supuhee: Smart Update can certainly change a backup into a safety clone... but, I won't argue with success!
I spoke too soon, Dave. The new Panther clone again shows generic icons (don't know what was looking at when I thought the problem was solved, perhaps I had booted from MacHD without realizing it). The Tiger clone is OK; all icons show up properly. (Note that I have 10.3.9 on MacHD and made the Tiger clone by installing Tiger on top of a Panther clone).

The Terminal command you suggested works on MacHD but not on clones. Can you change it so it will run on clones?

[dnanian]

A backup is going to be just like the source -- the command should work just the same way, supuhee, as it doesn't specify any drive.

Is anyone else out there seeing this?

[supuhee]

Recall that your command did not work for the source either; it at least went through the motions but kept complaining about the plists of my apps whose names begin with C -- one after the other, in inverse alphabetical order. See my message of 7-29-05, "No luck. Earlier today I..." Also see our subsequent exchanges, wherein I responded to your suggestionss of what might be wrong.

As I told you then, the same command does NOTHING on the clone. Here is the latest try:

Last login: Wed Aug 3 09:05:14 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan% /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan%

Perhaps this is a red herring, but edwardan was the original username assigned by OS 10.1. For consistency with my other machines I changed it to edwardanders a few months ago and had no troubles. But I wonder if the truncated name exists somewhere in the bowels of the machine and causes mischief in this particular operation.

The generic icons are most troublesome for Office apps. I reinstalled Office 2004 on MacHD but that did not solve the problem. Nor did my attempt to restore icons, a few at a time, with File Buddy.

[dnanian]

This really seems to indicate a damaged drive -- you have to understand that the command isn't "mine", as such, but the normal procedure for rebuilding the LaunchServices cache.

You can't really assign the icons "on the fly", either, because they're generated at runtime based on the application associations.

What happens if you try to inspect one of the "bad files", and then change its launch association with the "Get Info" inspector -- and then click the "Change all" part, too?

[supuhee]

This really seems to indicate a damaged drive -- you have to understand that the command isn't "mine", as such, but the normal procedure for rebuilding the LaunchServices cache.

You can't really assign the icons "on the fly", either, because they're generated at runtime based on the application associations.

What happens if you try to inspect one of the "bad files", and then change its launch association with the "Get Info" inspector -- and then click the "Change all" part, too?
Being sure that your diagnosis was correct even if the cure did not work, I tried a backup from HD to clone: "Safety clone- shared apps and users" and "Copy newer files...". Having used HD for the last few days because the clone acted up, I figured that Frameworks on HD would be newer. Indeed, that seems to have done the trick. During the backup Sys/Libr/Frameworks was copied, and the cure has lasted through 2 restarts.

On File Buddy, the bad files show the correct creator and type so File Buddy does not let you change anything. I then changed one file to a different type and told FB to match a good file. It was changed properly except for the icon.

I doubt if the (20 GB) drive is at fault. I run SMART Reporter every hour, and the Tiger clone on another partition works OK. Mac HD sits on another, brand-new drive (300 GB, but my Sawtooth G4 sees only 120 GB; could that be the problem? I tried an Acard controller which fixed the size problem but caused both internal drives to be regarded as SCSI, with SMART disabled).

Anyhow, the problem seems solved.

[dnanian]

You definitely shouldn't use "Copy Newer" for this, supuhee -- "Smart Update" is the way to go (which is a *superset* of Copy Newer).

It's weird, though -- the Frameworks shouldn't be newer at all if you didn't install any OS updates. But, it would copy the LaunchServices cache, and maybe that made a difference.

I don't think the drive's at fault -- but rather the OSX install. It's possible that the Sawtooth is causing some issues -- I don't have one to verify -- but, again, this is really not something we've had reported, and other than the LaunchServices cache -- which is doing the associations -- I don't know what the problem could be.

I'll continue to try to reproduce it at this end, though, and if you come up with any additional information or insight, let me know.

Thanks!

[sjk]

No luck. Earlier today I tried sandbox but got no response, now I tried MacHD. I get the following messages:
__________________________________
2005-07-29 20:50:30.519 lsregister[769] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CocoaBooklet.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan%
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan% /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
2005-07-29 20:53:57.321 lsregister[773] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CLIX/CLIX.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan% /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
2005-07-29 20:55:27.978 lsregister[778] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
Contents/Info.plist -- file://localhost/Applications/C-E/CLIX/CLIX.app/
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
[Eds-G4:~] edwardan%
___________________________________________
I trashed Cocoa Booklet and its plist file, but then Terminal complained about CLIX. and after I expunged CLIX and its plist, it complained about Chop. Evidently Terminal wants to clear out my entire Applications folder step by step, which is no solution.I noticed similar messages in 10.4.x on my iMac G5 when clicking the Extensions tab of the RCDefaultApp preference pane. At first they referred to older files (archived under my home directory) but after tedious deleting enough of them the messages referred to newer files I didn't want to delete. By then I was ready to give up anyway and haven't gotten back to resolving the matter. I can't replicate it on the eMac I'm using right now.

[JoeSh]

I just bought SuperDuper (which has a beautiful interface, btw) and used it to "defragment" my system drive by doing a backup and restore.

After the restore I had the above-mentioned file association problem.

Your one-liner seems to have fixed the symptom but I am a bit concerned about the underlying problem.

Also, and possibly related, my DiskCatalogMaker program crashed while reading its catalog. This is the first time I've seen such a crash from it. Just a heads-up.

[dnanian]

The underlying problem is just that it can take time for LaunchServices to refresh itself. "Forcing" a refresh makes sure everything is caught up.

I can't tell you why DiskCatalogMaker might crash... did it succeed a second time?

[JoeSh]

DiskCatalogMaker worked fine after restarting.

[dnanian]

OK, Joe -- that's good to hear. It's hard to say what might have been going on there without looking at why it crashed, but it could have just had a bug when it found itself running from a different drive...